


Bed Rest and Bad Decisions

by TheGirlWithTheRedBalloon



Series: Come A Little Closer [1]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Female Danny "Danno" Williams, Hospitalization
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 09:27:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15482724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGirlWithTheRedBalloon/pseuds/TheGirlWithTheRedBalloon
Summary: After giving Steve half of her liver, Danny wakes up in the hospital next to him.





	Bed Rest and Bad Decisions

**Author's Note:**

> It’s been a long time since I watched the episode that this scene plays with so apologies for anything out of place, other than the obvious... Danny’s a woman. It just popped into my head and I thought I’d play with it a bit.
> 
> Might do a longer piece if anybody wants it. Let me know!
> 
> UPDATE: I'm currently working on a longer piece. I went back and watched the finale of season 6 and I just couldn't resist doing a rewrite with Danny as a woman. So it's a rewrite and then it veers sharply out of canon. I think its probably better than much of what's already up. STAY TUNED!
> 
> UPDATE: The new version is up! Go check it out and tell me what you think. I'll probably end up deleting this work at some point because it's being incorporated into the new story.

Danny looked over at her partner who was, blessedly, asleep in the bed next to her. Steve—disregarding however pale and worn out he was—looked incredibly peaceful. All lines of worry and stress gone from his eyes, no hard crease between his brows, his lips quite nearly turned up just at the corners. Ok, that last bit might have been Danny trying to make herself feel better about their decidedly shitty situation. Steve nearly dying and both of them ending up in the hospital was not what Danny, or any rational human being, would call a good day. Steve would, Danny mused, have a way to make light of it all, as he always did when things went sideways.

She sighed and looked up at the ceiling. Giving half her liver to Steve had obviously been the right decision, no doubt about that. But she hadn’t anticipated being stuck in a joint recovery room with the man. Sure, the staff probably thought they’d enjoy a familiar face and it made visits from their friends and families easier. _But at what cost?_ She couldn’t help wondering, what with their constant bickering, how the hell they were going to survive long enough to recover from the surgery. _And the poor nurses._

Steve grumbled in his sleep and she looked back over at him. At least one good thing came out of this terrifying mess. Her partner was finally getting to rest. These days it seemed like Steve never slowed down, barely stopping to get a meager amount of sleep before he was up and chasing more bad guys around the island and jumping off buildings and kicking down doors and doing every other terrible thing short of giving a Danny a literal heart attack. She’d had to patch him up in the office more than she’d ever admit to medical staff after Steve managed to talk her out of dragging him to the very hospital they were currently stuck at. _Can’t talk your way outta this one, now can you, babe?_

She watched him sleep. For how long, she wasn’t sure. There was a strange need she had to make sure his chest was rising and falling with every breath, even though the monitors’ constant low beeping should have be enough. She watched as his eyes fluttered beneath his eyelids as he dreamed, dark lashes twitching with the motion. He was quite handsome when he wasn’t actively laughing in Death’s face. _He’s handsome regardless,_ she thought. And then, _oh god._ Because she had worked very hard over the years to keep thoughts of that nature out of her head. Sure, she slipped up sometimes—again, more often than she’d ever admit to—she was only human. But thinking things like that while on mandatory bed rest in the same room as the man towards whom the thoughts were directed, was not, absolutely not, allowed to happen.

They had toed that line between professional and flirtatious too many times to count in the years that they’d been partners. Danny had been certain, on multiple occasions—usually after a particularly difficult case or near-death experiences—that the tension between them would snap. Only every time, just before it did, they backed down. _They,_ Danny was sure to emphasize. Because it was never just her, and she knew Steve, knew him well enough to know when he was holding back.

She was still watching Steve when he opened his eyes in a fluttering motion far too delicate for a Navy SEAL. She was still watching him when a slow smile—and a twinge of pain evident just under the surface, if you knew what to look for—spread across his lips. Still watching as he scratched out a sleepy “hey.” She watched him as he laid there, alive. Less intact than she’d have liked him to be but hey, she’d take what she could get. “You look awful, Danno.” And that seemed to do it. She looked up and wiped a hand down her face.

“Of course! Give him half my liver and that’s all I get. No ‘thanks for the liver, Danno’ or ‘you saved my life, Danno’ or God forbid even an ‘I’m sorry I nearly died, again, Danno’.” She smoothed a hand over her hair and sure enough it had been sticking up all over the place. Her face, no doubt, looked just as bad. She was never one to wear much make up but death-defying acts and surgery never did anything good for a girl’s complexion. Nor did an annoying partner who thought he was indestructible even after evidence to the contrary. An annoying partner who was currently giving Danny the strangest look, caught somewhere between affection, pain, and amusement. She opened her mouth to comment on it but he spoke before she could.

“I’m sorry, Danno.” It was soft and a little cracked. It was also unexpected. So much so that Danny’s mouth actually snapped shut. “Really, I am.” And there was that tension, so thick she’d need Steve’s tactical knife to cut through it.

“That’s— Well,” she sputtered under Steve’s heavy gaze. “Good,” she recovered, more than a few seconds later. “You better start coming up with ways to make up for it now, cuz you’re gonna need them, babe.” She hadn’t used the endearment out loud in a while and Steve’s eyes seemed to crinkle in response, the smile going a little wider. Maybe, she thought—turning away from him, her own smile gracing her lips—this mandatory bed rest wouldn’t be so bad.


End file.
